Let's face it, most of us are list freaks. Why else would we be on ICM. And by enjoying lists, many of us also like making them. The forum truly thrives when a poll is active. It's a great way to get together around the films we love (and then have angry people rip the films a new one for being trash underserving of getting on the list )

So far most polls have been rather spontaneous and have been up to whatever the poll creator was interested in doing. This won't stop, obviously, no need to make things too structured. But how about voicing your interests. What do you think would be a great poll to have in the near future?

mjf edit:

How to host a poll:
1. Make the voting thread.
2. Download the IMDb and iCM lists at the deadline. You can use this program if you want, or you can do it manually. The filenames should be the usernames. If the list is unranked, put (unranked) at the end of the filename. If the list is partially-ranked, put (unrankedX) at the end of the filename, where X is the number of ranked films.
3. If you are using filmcounter6 or earlier, use the duplicate checker program to check for duplicates.
4. Use this program to calculate the results. The program should be in the same folder as the lists, and you should have a file called scoring.txt. The 1st line should be the half-life, and the 2nd line should be the point value of a #1 vote. Half-life=50 works well for most polls, but you may want to change it depending on the average list size.
5. Use Excel to sort the lists by points, add the list to iCM (or IMDb), and export the list to get the titles and years.
6. Add screenshots to the spreadsheet.
7. Use an Excel formula to generate the result posts (you can reuse formulas from old poll spreadsheets).
8. Make the results thread, and copy/paste the result posts from the spreadsheet.

#6 and #8 are the most time-consuming steps, but people can help you with those if you want.

Last edited by St. Gloede on October 7th, 2016, 4:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

I second TV shows. I actually thought about starting up that poll a few months ago, but it's a little tricky (do you include everything? Or separate polls for animated shows, sitcoms, dramas, mini-series, etc.?) so I ditched the idea. Probably worth doing at some point, though.

Others:

Film Noir
Docs
Westerns

Last edited by sebby on April 16th, 2013, 11:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Hey I'll have some free time in a couple of weeks so I'd like to do a "films by female directors" poll. I'd probably do it by hand just because so many of my favorites aren't on imdb, though I doubt it would make a big difference. Any interest?

Yeah, I was thinking about what other country polls we could do. Italy is definitely up there. Maybe Germany? I've not seen many spanish films but that would be a contender too. I definitely need to get more familiar with the cinema of certain countries.

I would be completely unable to make a list like this, not because I haven't seen unique films but because I a) have no way of quantifying that uniqueness b) have no easy way of trudging through the thousands of movies I've seen to pick out the ones that might qualify and c) perceived uniqueness is often a function of viewing habits and knowledge of both film and other art forms. For example Pulp Fiction and its non-linear narrative seemed very unique when I first saw having seen very few films, it doesn't seem so now. The first experimental films I watched seemed unique, but they don't now that I've seen many more.

Would Roundhay Garden Scene be considered unique? Or can uniqueness be diminished by later developments that render that uniqueness mundane in the future?

To make things simple I'd say unique = really outside the norm. For example you could be allowed to nominate all Guy Maddin films despite many of them being quite alike. That's just my idea though, I'm sure we could find other ways to simplify this as well.

Serriform on Apr 17 2013, 04:48:33 PM wrote:Maybe I could invite participants from FG1 and 3 as well. Would anyone be offended if I did that?

I'm totally fine with people from FG entering as long as they actually post their list on here rather than just submit a list on IMDb as that would pretty pointless (wouldn't even be a forum list). I know a few of the members on here came from FG3 or at least post on both sites.

We struggle a bit more for activity at certain points; especially when there isn't a big poll on and Kaspar isn't posting. Everyone is welcome to join really.

Serriform on Apr 17 2013, 04:48:33 PM wrote:Maybe I could invite participants from FG1 and 3 as well. Would anyone be offended if I did that?

I'm totally fine with people from FG entering as long as they actually post their list on here rather than just submit a list on IMDb as that would pretty pointless (wouldn't even be a forum list). I know a few of the members on here came from FG3 or at least post on both sites.

We struggle a bit more for activity at certain points; especially when there isn't a big poll on and Kaspar isn't posting. Everyone is welcome to join really.

Oh ok well my idea was that there doesn't seem to be much interest in a forum list, so maybe as an experiment I could try something "larger" in a way. And no I wouldn't require people to join this forum to submit a list, though I would advertise it of course.

I think the next poll I do will be the cinematography poll. Before I make the thread, does anyone have any suggestions regarding how to word the poll? Should cinematography include everything that affects the look of the film? Or should editing not be taken into account? Should animated films be eligible?

mjf314 on May 16 2013, 04:21:45 PM wrote:I think the next poll I do will be the cinematography poll. Before I make the thread, does anyone have any suggestions regarding how to word the poll? Should cinematography include everything that affects the look of the film? Or should editing not be taken into account? Should animated films be eligible?

If you mean to include editing it should probably be about découpage. If you include the things within the image it should probably be Mise-en-scène. It's a little difficult to define and rate, or poll, cinematography by itself without some knowledge of the subject beforehand. and even though I love animation I'm going to say no. animated films shouldn't count (we'd have to get into the Life of Pi argument eventually).

Including editing in cinematography would be silly. Set design, though, is much tougher to separate from cinematography, especially in memory when you haven't seen a film in years. Something like "Most visually impressive films" might work if you want to include the whole look of a film.